03/03/98 - Tuesday's News:
- MacGurus replies on PowerForce G3 pricing Here's the latest on the pricing on the card direct from MacGurus:,
"MacGurus' posted price on these boards remains $1,699.99. Price-matching
with BLOL's price is possible on a case-by-case basis."
- PowerForce 275 Price War Halted: Bottom Line sent the following note regarding pricing on the PowerForce G3 275/275 CPU upgrades:
"
At this time Bottom Line has a firm and fantastic price of $1599.99 on the
PowerLogix PowerForce G3 card that has been fine tuned to 300/300. We will
not price compete with MacGurus any longer. The reason will be addressed
by PowerLogix and Bottom Line tomorrow or Wednesday.
In the mean time if you or any of your readers have any questions, they can
be directed to myself gcole@blol.com Marketing Manager BottomLine
Distribution."
- Guest Review: Newer Tech G3 266/133 Card: Vinny sent in the following Guest Review of the Newer Tech 266mhz G3 card with 133mhz 1MB backside cache. He compares the performance of his stock 8500/120 at several tasks in Photoshop and Macbench.
- Bottom Line's Apple G3 System Pricing: Bottom line sent the following updated system pricing:
- Global Economy Memory Special: Global Economy is offering a discount on their 64MB dimms to my readers.
They wrote:
"
I want to expend a special to Accelerate your Mac Customers! We will give Accelerate your Mac Customers a Whopping $10.00 discount when they order the item listed below, just for mentioning That they are readers and believers of Accelerate your Mac!
I would like to extend this offer until the 16th of this month."
64M 60ns 2k refresh DIMMs $130 - $10 Accelerate Your Mac! discount = $120 Net cost. You must mention the site to receive this price.
- RealPC 3Dfx Upgrade Feedback: My tale of FTP woes was echoed by many readers. Here's a sample of some mail on the subject:
"
Read about your troubles with the Real PC update. I had the same
experience with the ftp server. It disconnected on me no less than five
times while I was trying to d/l that upgrade disk file. I did finally get
it and install it, and it does work for me on my G3 MT. I'm using a
Diamond Monster 3D card that I got second hand from a PC friend. I'm
enclosing a screenshot of my RealPC DOS startup screen. Mine says "RealPC
3D 1.02B" or something to that effect. I think there was a "regular" 1.02
update released on the same day as the 3D. Maybe something got crossed
somewhere????It does work, though, I was even able to get Quake2 to run. And yes, the
sound is horrible. I was using a borrowed copy of Q2, so I wasn't able to
play extensively, but I ran a time demo and got around 10.7 frames per
second. Not exactly playable, but if VPC 2 has the purported 40%
increase, that could bump it to near 15 (which is about what I got with
Quake on my old 7100 ;))
One thing, I play with mouse free look, and the mouse support is
horrible. I get almost no response, and when it does respond, it just
spirals out of control. All the keys work fine, though. Led to a little
modification of my setup.
I'm wondering - if I tweak the 3DFX card in the Mac environment, will
that carry through and boost performance on the PC side??? I'll have to
get the Q2 CD back and try it. Thanks for all your hard work on the site!
"
I'm not sure about the Mac Tweaker settings carrying over as the PC glide/DirectX defaults may reset the card - But you should also try the tweaks I use on the PC, by adding them to the autoexec.bat file (it's a text file in the root of the C: drive). It's as simple as adding "set" statements to your autoexec.bat file, as shown at the bottom of my Power3D page. You can use any text editor to do it (Notepad in windows95 accessories folder works fine), but you have to reboot (RealPC) to have the settings take effect. I've created a batch file with the settings (you can cut and paste if you like) called dostweak.bat. By adding these to your autoexec.bat file these settings will be permanent - 'set' statements executed in a dos window under 95 are not retained when the window is closed. The batch file has the 'SET SST_GRXCLK=50'
(stock setting) - if you wish to overclock the card this number needs to be changed to whatever
speed you are willing to run the card (caution: values over 55 - 57 mhz can run the card too hot unless you have a fan). This info is for reference only - please post any questions about this in
the video card forum, not via mail, I'm trying to catch up here. The alternative is to use one of the Windows 95 tweakers like GLQ+_GLQuake_Optimizer (Zip file).
- G3/266 LibMoto Test Results: Last night I ran a few of the same real world applications tests on the Apple G3/266 MT that I run on all the G3 upgrade cards. The system did quite well, almost as good as the Newer 266/266 CPU card running
in the 8500 (although that test used OS 7.6.1, not OS 8.1). As proof of LibMoto's performance boost in real applications I ran the Bryce 2.0 rendering tests with and without LibMoto.
The G3 266MT was running at stock speeds, 1MB disk cache, VM off, default (as installed) ram allocated
to Bryce 2 and the video mode was 1024x768, thousands colors.
Render Magical Knights I scene
- G3/266MT With LibMoto: 4:10
- G3/266MT W/O LibMoto: 4:15 (5 seconds slower)
- MaxPowr Pro+ 45/266/266: 4:06 (60ns memory setting, no motherboard cache)
Render Alexandria II scene
- G3/266MT With LibMoto: 5:40
- G3/266MT W/O LibMoto: 5:44 (4 seconds slower)
- MaxPowr Pro+ 45/266/266: 5:39 (60ns memory setting, no motherboard cache)
As you can see - that's a far cry from the 60% FPU boost seen in MacBench. Although
I didn't test it with LibMoto yet, my standard Infini-D 4.0 Ch.7 final rendering on the
stock G3/266 did well in comparison to the high end G3 cards:
Render Magical Knights I scene
- G3/266MT (no LibMoto): 51:23
- MaxPowr Pro 45/250/166 w/no L3 = 53:17 (60ns memory setting)
- MaxPowr Pro+ 45/266/266 w/no L3 = 47:10 (60ns memory setting)
- PowerForce G3 292mhz/no L3 = 43:18
- PowerLogix Pro 233 w/1meg Cache (604E@263mhz) = 1:20:26
All the CPU cards tested used OS 7.6.1, Speed Doubler 2 and Libmoto on a 8500.
- Although the owner of the 3Dfx Cool site does not like it I'm sure, there
are photos of the 3Dfx Cool fan in the current issue of Boot Magazine . They have
a article on Overclocking your 3Dfx card that shows how the fan mounts and very clear
photos of the fan and bracket. The Boot web site does not have the article or the photos
it seems.
Yesterday's News
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